Posted
by
Zonk
on Monday August 21, 2006 @12:48PM
from the someone-should-apologize-for-the-broken-planet dept.

eldavojohn writes "A giant explosion on the sun in January of 2005 allowed SMART-1 (a European spacecraft orbiting the moon) to detect what elements the moon is made up of based on the X-rays from the sun's explosion. This allows scientists to speculate on the moon's origins while seeing data from all over the moon as opposed to the core samples we have collected and returned in the past. From the article: 'Scientists responsible for the D-CIXS instrument on SMART-1 are also announcing that they have detected aluminium, magnesium and silicon. "We have good maps of iron across the lunar surface. Now we can look forward to making maps of the other elements." said SMART-1's Principal Investigator.'"

Oh man, you can bet that looking into the moon or bits of it will have you coined as a loony, figuring out its "source" is just plain cheesy, and given its size is anyway having to force a choice between the light and dark side.

13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19And God said, Let the lesser light of the night be composed of green cheese.

Unless you can pull out huge chunks of the metals at one go without much work or processing, I seriously doubt it. Just getting a couple people on the surface to walk around a bit is massively expensive... forget about a sustained effort with mining equipment, life support and everything else you'd need.

You won't need much work - moon's gravity is far less than that of Earth so extracting and packing large boulders of stuff without machinery then becomes possible. Just pick up a boulder, and move.

Are you seriously suggesting that humans *manually* mine the Moon? You've got to be kidding. Yeah, I'm sure astronauts are going to be lining up to train for years just to go to the moon to work as slave labor because hauling machinery up there is too expensive. Even in the worst of times, humans have had beasts

Just getting a couple people on the surface to walk around a bit is massively expensive... forget about a sustained effort with mining equipment, life support and everything else you'd need.

Just use robots, remote controlled where neccessary. We can already build machines that can traverse the moon, we can build machines that can mine and extract ore with little human intervention, automated refineries are easy, and power the whole thing with lovely naked solar radiation! The first thing they build are

Actually it is a break even proposition for gold. is at about 625 per ounce...16 ounces per pound, 10,000...the current cost per pound to send something into space ( i dont know what the cost to retrieve it per pound would be, to send it back though) I would assume it is less expensive to send back, time is not exactly a factor, or life support systems etc.

It is difficult to calculate because I couldnt find much info on sending stuff back from the moon, I am willing to bet it is quite a bit cheaper. But the infrastructure on the moon etc ruins any math. It would be break even for gold to be sent into space...and retrieving it would probably be long term profitable. (providing you can find enough gold)

Platinum is 1200 dollars per ounce making it much more possible, if sufficient quantities could be found.

The cargo ship would probably be reasonably priced...no equipment on board, doesnt need to be very fast, just a computer control system and the rockets etc necessary to bring it back in. Could be an interesting proposition.

Regardless of the economics (which you discussed quite well, I think), the moon should be very metal-poor if it was formed via collision. The heavier metals "sank" towards the core when the earth was molten. The collision knocked off the top, lighter material, like silica.
The density of the moon is 3.35 g/cm^3 whereas the density of the earth is 5.51 g/cm^3.

Gold is at about $625 per troy ounce or 480 grains, or about $1.30 per grain. A troy pound is 12 ounces or 5760 grains, whereas an avoirdupois pound, used in launch masses, is 7000 grains, so one avoirdupois pound of gold is worth about $9100.

I suspect retrieving dissolved gold from the ocean would be more cost-effective.

Of course, the moon would have much lower launch costs than we do. So if we sent a minimal amount of automated equipment, I would think that it might be doable. In particular, if the moon launches using a rail system, then I think that the launch of material is dirt cheap.

Actually, it's about 1516, because things on the moon weighs 1/6 of what they do here. *And* if you mine the gold, you are removing from its mass, making it weigh even less. So, i'd adjust it to an earlier 1500s.

Unfortunately, in the 1500s, exploration of the moon would get you a marked as a looney, and a looney isn't worth very much, especially outside of Canad eh?

I mean, nobody has seen the gold in Fort Knox in years, but it's been traded around left and right. Plenty of people are willing to pay for pieces of paper saying they own some gold - why not just prove it's there, stake a claim on it, and then sell it here on Earth?

Still a better deal than the green pieces of paper not even saying that!

I love gold people... at a fundamental level they don't realize that both paper and gold are completely useless unto themselves, and are only worth what people will pay for it. If you really worry about your well being in an apocalypse, buy canned food and ammmo, because that is all that will be worth anything.

I realize very well that everything is worth only what people are willing to pay for it, however, I don't see how it undermines my original statement (it was mainly a joke, btw), I still think it's a better deal. Exhibit A. [investmentu.com] Exhibit B. [mises.org] Sorry I couldn't find some pretty graphs for both of them.

Also consider refinement and mining costs. We're not going to find this stuff in bar form just laying on the surface. It's going to raise the costs significantly, I'm sure.

I wonder how much gold would need to be brought to earth to effect the market value of gold. There's a chance that, in order to profit, a company would need to mine so much gold that their returns would faulter on a decline in gold prices due to a surplus.

With the moon, why not build a space elevator? It would have to be much, much cheaper and easier than doing so on Earth. We probably have the tech to do it right now. Given that it would be useful for things like exploration and research as well, the cost of building such a space elevator could be written-off as far as a mining project goes.

Umm, because using a space elevator to put gold into orbit around the moon wouldn't be very profitable?

Or were you suggesting that the space elevator connect a point on the moon with a point on the Earth? If so, I recommend you go out one night and watch the moon for a few hours. You may notice a slight problem with your plan.

Also there's the inflation issue. When the New World was opened up and all that Aztec gold was shipped back to Spain, prices skyrocketed. If you dump a ton of Moon gold on the Earth, the gold won't be worth $625/oz.

Actually, I've heard that it costs $10-20k (depending on the type of rocket used) per kg (not lb.) to lift a payload to LEO. It should therefore cost at least that much, probably somewhat more, to lift all the way to the moon, which is considerably farther away than LEO.How much it would cost to *collect* and *return* a mined cargo is a completely different matter from how much it would cost to lift a vehicle up there to retrieve it, and these costs likely dwarf the lift costs of the vehicle outbound from

Your point doesn't stand - the moon mineral composition is fundamentally different from Earth's for the straight forward reason that it was made up of materials from Earth's outer layers - it lacks the heavy elements that concentrate in the Earth's core.

Your point doesn't stand - the moon mineral composition is fundamentally different from Earth's for the straight forward reason that it was made up of materials from Earth's outer layers - it lacks the heavy elements that concentrate in the Earth's core.

Got it. We're dead certain that the moon was ripped out of the earth because its composition is so different;).

I mean, could be, but it's hardly so QED when you have to explain discrepancies like that.

And you know this for a fact how? Just curious. I agree it's very unlikely that there are clumps or veins of palladium on the moon, but it's not impossible. The K-T boundary layer is significantly higher in several trace elements, so it is surmised that they came from an asteroid that hit the earth, so at least that asteroid had much higher concentrations. Why couldn't Luna?

Yes, I've always kind of wondered about the wisdom of trying to obtain any rare element from space. To make a certain element economical or even possible to mine on the Earth the element has to be concentrated somehow. On the Moon there are fewer ways that elements can be concentrated. There was never liquid water on the moon to erode and transport an element. For that matter there is little to no variation in the types of rocks, there is no granite on the Moon. The lack of granite is due to how granit

I agree with what you said as to the moon; however, there are asteroids that have been identified that are quite concentrated in various metals. If we could come up with a technically feasible way to move some of the more modest ones into a high earth orbit (perhaps a good application for a thermonuclear engine), they could even be processed much closer to home. A bonus if we can "capture" and process near-Earth asteroids that threaten our existence every so often.

This is Score:2, Insightful? Wow.On large scales, things will average out. In resource extraction, though, you care about *local differences*. You're saying you can dig a gold mine anywhere and get the same results. I think I'll side with the people who want to dig where the concentrations are. Duh.

The more we know about the moon, the greater the possibility of finding a useful concentration of something. I'd bet that H3 concentrations would have a better shot at economic viability than any metal, but I've

No. The only unique property of moon ore is that it isn't inside such a big gravity well, so it is less expensive to move up into space. And unless something fantastically rare and useful can be found there, even the most prized minerals would only be attractive in massive amounts because you would first have to more the necessary equipment up there, not to mention transport capacity to get the stuff to any buyer.

Only tourism and science are likely to be viable there in the foreseeable future. Big exception: if we unexpectedly manage to get automated construction from raw minerals to work, this could make industry on the moon so cheap it could become viable to start mining and export there. However, this isn't going to happen anytime soon, and when it does it will end capitalism as we know it anyway, so it is nothing you could base a business model on.

You underestimate the power of greed. The real question is how capitalism would adapt. My own view is that the patent system would probably be used to restrict use of the associated technologies to a privileged few, and thus ensure that the vast majority of the wealth produced continued to be distributed as it always has.

Last I looked into the gold market, it is exceptionally easy to own gold without having any transported to you. I seem to recall the US government doing the same with silver, as evidenced by silver certificates.

Actualy, there's a second unique property of moon ore - absolutely no need what-so-ever to worry about the enviromental impact of mining it. That would likely have a pretty decent impact on the economics of moon-mining.

Its not made of gold, but if it was it would destroy the gold markets value. Anything that is actually up there would have to be worth more in actual intrincic value (energy, water, building materials) than the cost of setting up an operation. Someday we will definatly be mining the moon and other astroids for materials to build with, but I seriously doupt so called precious metals or gems will have much value in such a future.

Even though it's unlikely there will be significant precious metals on the moon, sending stuff back to Earth is relatively easy once everything gets up there in the first place. The trip from the Moon to the Earth is effectively "downhill."

Yeah. But it's the brick wall at the bottom of the hill you have to worry about.

To me, the tricky part of getting it here would be landing it. Sure, you can get it to the Earth fairly easily--Moon has low gravity, Earth has high gravity, etc. The problem to me is that you kind of need to arrange a soft landing for it. So you have to slow down, say, 1,000,000 pounds traveling at, say, 20,000 MPH and set it down gently on the Earth.

Even if the cost of transporting Moon gold to Earth is zero, it will not make goldmining profitable in Moon. It would just make gold mining unprofitable on Earth.

For example Amethyst used to included in the list of cardinal gems, (i.e. diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald). But huge discoveries in Russia and South America has erorded its value to almost that of costume jewellery. On my way to work I pass a shop window displaying an Amethyst geode some three feet long and 1 feet across, partially opened. M

For example Amethyst used to included in the list of cardinal gems, (i.e. diamond

I assume cardinal gems are gems whch have value because they are naturally rare? If so, diamonds do not qualify as a cardinal gem, despite popular myth. Diamonds are both common and easy to make by man. The only thing making diamonds scarce is the maket manipulations by the like of the De Beers cartel. In other words, diamonds are artificially made scare to maintain their value.

Not to be a wet blanket, but: No. I really do wish we could go exploring the solar system - with giant spinning spaceships made of lead, titanium and steel. But it just isn't going to happen. We won't have the energy to get there. The USA going to the moon in the late 60s early 70s is the Modern equivalent of the Pyramids.

In 1970, USA oil extraction was at its peak. We had energy to burn, literally.

We're not going to put many more, if any, people on the moon - and we're not going to put people on Mars,

I don't get it. Surely a trip to the moon doesn't use more energy than a thousand domestic aeroplane flights, that is, not very much compared to our total energy use each year. What are the numbers here?

I guess that depends upon whether you're essentially optimistic or pessimistic.Assuming the human race face some sort of doomsday scenario (a rather large assumption), my guess is that we'll eventually see one or more disruptive technologies which will provide cheap energy in some form. Whether that comes from advanced solar (maybe something a lot better than the 20% efficiency we can get from cells now, maybe thin films instead of cells), carbon nanotubes which allow a space elevator (hence maybe power sat

Three words for you man: Lunar Space Elevator. All you would need then is an economical way to do the mining -- keeping in mind that solar power works like a hot damn on the moon thanks to its thin atmosphere and lack of climate. You could probably only run the site during the times when the moon faced towards the sun (it would presumably be solar-powered), but that still provides you with a lot of mining time.

"I believe that the real "treasure" on the moon is helium-3 isotope. Just isn't present in sufficient quantities on Earth, and it could be the next big power source."

You hear this sort of talk a lot among space enthusiasts, but unfortunately it is very unlikely that anyone will ever want to build a reactor that runs off of helium-3. Yes, you can make a reactor that burns helium-3, but it is much less technically challenging to build a reactor that runs off hydrogen and deuterium. Since there is an essent

I wish your post had been up before I posted mine. Do you get enough He3 from the D-T reaction to fuel an He3 plant?I like the idea of a no neutron He3-He3 reaction, producing your energy as charged particles. I'm thinking the plants would last longer without the neutron flux, and be easier to decomission when that time finally did arrive. Plus if you're doing everything with neutrons, you're back to spending lots of money in plant costs due to heating water to spin turbine/generator sets, vice some sort of

Excellent point. I'd thought of H3, figuring perhaps it might be concentrated in any ices that could be found, it's astonishingly expensive, and ices would be easiest of all possible feedstocks to process.I'm not buying into the idea of mining heavy metals anytime soon, as it seems you'd need some extensive infrastructure, like maybe a mass driver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver [wikipedia.org]. Given our tendency toward monkey dominance games, I'm not sure I even want a mass driver on the moon. Sooner or later, s

Forget the origins of the moon. The moon's here. What I find interesting is that they're mapping the elements on the moon, and where they are. This gives us a map of where to go mine. They already said they found iron; eventually, someone will find a way to make moon mining more monetarily motivational.

I'm just glad we didn't build a giant XRay machine to examine space objects, when there's a free source in the center of the solar system happy to provide the rays. 'Cause I'd hate to see the XRay bill otherwise.

They already said they found iron; eventually, someone will find a way to make moon mining more monetarily motivational.

I think that will happen when we have appropriate infrastructure on the moon to make things up there rather than down here.

I'm not all that convinced that it will ever be economically feasible to send raw ore from the Moon to the Earth in order to build stuff down here, versus mining the ore here on Earth. Heck, consider Pittsburgh. It's close to iron ore (raw material), close to the oce

"The basic idea is this: about 4.45 billion years ago, a young planet Earth -- a mere 50 million years old at the time and not the solid object we know today-- experienced the largest impact event of its history. Another planetary body with roughly the mass of Mars had formed nearby with an orbit that placed it on a collision course with Earth. When young Earth and this rogue body collided, the energy involved was 100 million times larger than the much later event believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The early giant collision destroyed the rogue body, likely vaporized the upper layers of Earth's mantle, and ejected large amounts of debris into Earth orbit. Our Moon formed from this debris."

Well of course the "lunar landing" rocks were similar to Earth's, they were from Earth. It is accepted fact that we never went to the moon. The present analyses simply add more support to this fact. Oh, and if you want to know my credentials, as IANAA (the last part can be astronomer or astronaut- take your pick) I watch Fox, and that is where I get all my current information, everything else is in my Bible. You can't imagine how much I have saved on bookcases and moving expenses over the years by only reading and owning one book.

Genesis 1:16For God made two great lights, the sun and the moon, to shine down upon the earth. The greater one, the sun, presides during the day; the lesser one, the moon, presides through the night. He also made the stars.

Well, not all the stars. There was this King Trishanku, who wanted to ascend to the heavens with his body. So he commissioned the sage Vishwamitra to perform the sacrifices and the rituals. But as King Trishanku was rising towards the heavens, Indra, the Lord of Heavens, struck him down with his weapon Vajrayutha. Vishwamitra suspended Trishanku in mid air. He eventually became a galaxy known as the Trishanku Mandala. So you see, atleast some stars were made by Sage Vishwamitra.

I call Shenanigans!Merodach rested a while, gazing upon the dead body of the dragon. He divided the flesh of Ku-pu,and devised a cunning plan.

Then the lord of the high gods split the body of the dragon like that of a mashde fish into two halves. With one half he enveloped the firmament; he fixed it there and set a watchman to prevent the waters falling down.With the other half he made the earth.Then he made the abode of Ea in the deep, and the abode of Anu in high heaven. The abode of Enlil was in the air.

Notice the gross egocentric position of the writer of this poetry.
The stars are an after thought as indicated but the, oh by the way, parenthetical status in the verse.
However as we now know the stars (ie the universe) are of such a grand scale compared to puny earth. This should be tip off for the decerning reader; but nooooo some have to take this poetry (and it is good poety) as a science textbook.

Whatever happened the TONS of moon dust that the USA supposedly has in storage somewhere? Doesn't that tell us what the Moon is made of? And... if we can bring back TONS of Moon dust then we could certainly bring back TONS of Gold!
--Matthew Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com [themindofmatthew.com]

Well, there's the conspiracy that says we never landed upon the moon to begin with.

However, a far more likely reason is that we didn't go down far enough with our core samples, and this nice massive burst of x-rays from the sun gives a chance to look deeper into the moon where we couldn't before.

If you've seen the widescreen version of The Fifth Element, you see that the moon is a dead sphere of "pure evil". In the 4:3 version, you don't see the first moon and hence can't really make the connection... (cropped content SUCKS).

'Origins' aside, it's mining companies (and venture capitalists with an eye for off-world enterprises) that will be most interested in these findings, lending the idea that they are likely funding some of this research.

While this may sound absurd, it's perhaps worth asking: How much rock do you have to move off the Moon before the Earth starts seeing climatic changes as a result? Any one know of research into this area? Given the blatant denial certain first word countries have evidence in the face of an eroding Ozone layer, let's hope the moon isn't laden with valuable metals, ores and other resources..

I assumme you are talking about pollution from the spaceships necessary to do this. The actual transfer of matter from the moon to the earth in the quantities that we could do even if we put 100% of all human's efforts into doing it is unlikely to effect things one bit.My guess is that if some highly unlikely situation makes it profitable for independent prospectors to build their own ships and go to the moon to mine it, and there is a gold rush of some sort of these, then we should worry. Until then, howev

Sometime in Earth's early history, before the formation of life, a large Mars-sized object probably collided with the Earth throwing off a massive amount of material.

For a time its believed the Earth might have had a Saturn-like ring system until tidal/gravitational forces caused the material to begin clumping together into what would one day be the moon. Its also likely that some material rained back down on the Earth. Supporting this theory is the well known fact the Earth has a very faint, barely detectable, ring.

The findings make sense for the theory which states that an off-center impact of a largish planetesimal merged with the nascent earth 'momentarily', then threw off a globule roughly the same size as that planetesimal. It makes sense if you consider that the earth's mantle is made primarily of molten silicate rock and light metals, so an impact which 'punctured' the earth and 'kept on going' would have passed through the mantle and taken the mantle rock with it. The moon, if the samples brought back are an

That explains the philosophical aspect of the moon's origin (i.e. who did it and why) but not the scientific aspect (i.e. how)

Also, it should be noted that the moon was most likely created in verse 1:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The rest of the first chapter appears to be describing what an observer on the surface of earth might see during the creation (whether it took six literal days or billions of years). For example, the earth starts out as a molten ball without any disting

Well, I appreciate your effort, but GOD is GREAT, and when the Bible says the LORD created the world in 6 days, BELIEVE it. The LORD is GREAT!Your statement is right, when you say that the Bible need not be inconsistent with science. That's completely true, since science is merely a method of asking and answering questions in order to test hypotheses about the behavior of material world phenomena. But Jesus said that faith can move mountains, and there is no countercheck in the scientific method to compe

Genesis is myth. Most of what is in Genesis can be traced to other myths of earlier civilizations. For intelligent modern people to confuse a myth with reality is sad. Do your homework - for as Proverbs says "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps"

I thought one of the conditions for something to be considered a "hypothesis" was that it can, in some way, be tested. This would be what separates it from a "guess." Though, to be fair, I don't think what the poster quoted was either. I'd more accurately classify it as an "allegory."

There is a normal, 17 year sunspot cycle. It has been peaking lately. And this does have a small effect on global temperature. What it does not have, however, is a consistent, thirty-year long effect on temperature, nor does it have a strong enough effect to cause an entire degree of mean global temperature increase. Thanks for the FUD though, it was very subtely presented. The self-deprecating tone made it seem almost genuine.

I can take a soil sample in front of my apartment without showing large concentrations of any metals. They didn't look at very large areas of the moon... and while a lot smaller than the Earth, it's still a pretty big place. This gives them a chance to cover much larger areas.

n.b: this is all contingent on the belief that the Lunar landings weren't a conspiracy.